CHASING ZODIAC / Film crew has San Francisco time-traveling to '70s

G. Allen Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Thursday, October 6, 2005

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Actors Robert Downey, Jr., left, and Jake Gyllenhaal, right, on the set of "Zodiac." A movie crew will shoot a portion of "Chronicles," the Zodiac Killer film, in our mailroom beginning at noon. They'll shoot inside the room, on Minna St. and in a bar called Morti's (a fake set) in a Minna building we own. Warner Bros. has rented the spaces, so they're theirs to use. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The San Francisco Chronicle
Photo taken on 9/25/05, in San Francisco,CA. less

ZODIAC05_025_CG.JPG
Actors Robert Downey, Jr., left, and Jake Gyllenhaal, right, on the set of "Zodiac." A movie crew will shoot a portion of "Chronicles," the Zodiac Killer film, in our mailroom beginning at ... more

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez

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ZODIAC05_025_CG.JPG
Actors Robert Downey, Jr., left, and Jake Gyllenhaal, right, on the set of "Zodiac." A movie crew will shoot a portion of "Chronicles," the Zodiac Killer film, in our mailroom beginning at noon. They'll shoot inside the room, on Minna St. and in a bar called Morti's (a fake set) in a Minna building we own. Warner Bros. has rented the spaces, so they're theirs to use. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The San Francisco Chronicle
Photo taken on 9/25/05, in San Francisco,CA. less

ZODIAC05_025_CG.JPG
Actors Robert Downey, Jr., left, and Jake Gyllenhaal, right, on the set of "Zodiac." A movie crew will shoot a portion of "Chronicles," the Zodiac Killer film, in our mailroom beginning at ... more

"Reset!" yells an assistant, and several extras, who had been strolling on the sidewalk to serve as the background of Gyllenhaal's foreground, pace back to their original positions.

"Is that Dumpster (of the) period?" Fincher asks. When told it has indeed been placed there by the prop department, the director says, "It looks too clean."

It's 1978, after all.

No need to say more; prop masters form a creative mess of crumbling cardboard boxes and other signs of clutter. It's starting to look like a real San Francisco alley.

"Reset!"

If you've seen Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. or Mark Ruffalo around town -- or, more likely, you've been rerouted to your destination thanks to the closure of a street filled with 1960s and '70s vehicles -- you may have accidentally returned to the time when the Zodiac killer terrorized the Bay Area.

"Zodiac" is an $80 million movie about the series of killings that has never been solved. To re-create that time, Fincher, the director of the highly stylized "Se7en," Fight Club" and "Panic Room," is taking a more realistic approach -- filming as much as possible in the actual locations where the events took place.

That meant filming outside The Chronicle, where Paul Avery (Downey) first received letters from the killer in the late 1960s, and Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal) was a staff member who became obsessed with the case. The film's screenplay is written by James Vanderbilt from Graysmith's 1976 book.

Included in those scenes were a vintage 1960s U.S. mail truck ("Always use Zip Code!" the cartoon figure reminds us) delivering letters to The Chronicle mailroom and a street scene in which Mission between Fifth and Sixth streets was transformed into a street once again filled with those old, rounded, gas-guzzling Muni buses, Yellow Cabs and Plymouth Valiants, et al.

Still, despite all the big stars, multimillion-dollar budget and period detail, it is refreshing that the filming process drops everything and moves to get a shot during the magic hour -- the time, in the hour or so before sunset, that natural light provides the most photogenic moments. Mother Nature has been a friend in this way to cinematographers since the beginning of movies in the late 1800s.

"One more time!" Fincher yells after Take 11.

The 43-year-old, Marin County-raised director is in a good mood, but he casts his eyes toward the sky at the disappearing light.

Although a rain machine is sending sheets of water cascading onto vintage
cars
behind Red's
Java House
, with the Bay Bridge making for a colorful backdrop, most of "Zodiac" will be filmed in Los Angeles -- interior scenes, some nondescript exteriors -- and that's the sad reality of moviemaking in the Bay Area: It's too expensive to shoot here.

"San Francisco is a very expensive town, and it would not have been practical or financially feasible to shoot the entire movie here," producer Brad Fischer said. "Having said that, San Francisco in the 1970s was so iconic and so much a part of this story, it was important to capture what we did of the city."

However, Fischer, Fincher and screenwriter Vanderbilt were adamant that as much of the filming as possible not only take place in the Bay Area, but in the exact locations where the Zodiac events took place.

For example, the crew shot at Lake Berryessa, but since the Zodiac killer's attack there, almost all the site's trees have died. Production designer Don Burt planted 24 new ones, flying the pin-oak trees in by helicopter, watching them dangle 200 feet below, some of them 45 feet tall and weighing 13,000 pounds.

Burt even used gravel and piping to syphon water from the lake to nourish the trees' roots from an underground irrigation system he built. He also replanted 1,600 clumps of grass to match the original scenery.

The crew spent about 20 days filming in the Bay Area, wrapping this week before the move to Los Angeles for the final 85 or so days of the shoot.

"The vision always was to do as accurate and truthful a movie as possible about the events that occurred," said Vanderbilt, who suggested the "Zodiac" project to Fischer after the two had worked together on the 2003 thriller "Basic."

"Realism is what we're going for," Vanderbilt said. "We always talk about 'All the President's Men' as a model for a documentary feel to the movie."

Fischer, Mike Medavoy and Arnold Messer optioned Graysmith's book and sent the project to their first choice as director, Fincher.

"We did the first draft and sent it to David Fincher, sort of like asking the prettiest girl to the prom -- the worst she could say is no -- and to my surprise and delight, he said yeah," Vanderbilt said.

As he spoke, the prettiest girl at the prom, who has a gray beard and is balding, was wearing a rain slicker and boots, poking his head inside a '70s car, an old Coca-Cola truck in the background, to give direction to Gyllenhaal and his character's 3-year-old daughter as they prepare to meet Detective Dave Toschi (Ruffalo) about the case.

Vanderbilt interviewed many of the people involved in the actual case and said he thinks he knows who the Zodiac killer was.

Naturally, he wouldn't tell.

It's 1978, on First Street between Howard and Mission streets, near the bus terminal. Old Greyhound buses are driving in the background as Toschi sits in an unmarked police car, a light-brown 1960s
Chevrolet
, while his partner eats a burger and sips soda in the driver's seat. The Zodiac's first letter in four years has arrived at The Chronicle. Toschi receives the radio dispatch, puts the siren on the roof and slams across traffic, making a U-turn, while stunt drivers screech to a stop and narrowly miss high-speed collisions with the Chevrolet.

Fincher has to work fast, because the streets are blocked off and this is a big day. There are several events in the city -- the Folsom Street Fair and the Cowboys-49ers game at Candlestick among them -- and he has to clear out as soon as possible.

Although "Zodiac" is a retro film, it will be made with cutting-edge technology. One creative choice that is allowing the crew to work faster is Fincher's decision to use the new Grass Valley Viper FilmStream system, a digital video format.

That's right -- "Zodiac" is not being shot on film. The Viper system allows Fincher's crew to use less light, set up shots more quickly and play them back instantly. To speed up the process, Fincher is filming (that's still the technical term) most of his shots with two Viper cameras, meaning Savides has to light for two different setups at once.

Fincher used the system to shoot a commercial for Hewlett-Packard, and Michael Mann used it to shoot much of "Collateral," the Tom Cruise-Jamie Foxx thriller. But "Zodiac" will be the first Hollywood feature shot entirely on the Viper system.

None of the bulky cameras and unwieldy lights that were used to shoot, say "Dirty Harry" in San Francisco around the time of the Zodiac.

Fincher's light, mobile camera package stands in stark contrast to the old school bus and kids with '70s clothes at Third Avenue and Lake, the scene of a Zodiac murder at Washington and Maple or the vintage cars and police motorcycles outside Original Joe's in the Tenderloin at 2 in the morning.

Nevertheless, sometimes it seems that San Francisco hasn't changed much at all.